Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 78

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It was a number greater than the combined populations of several modest villages. The question of how they provisioned such a force, and how they had endured the winter, suddenly struck her.

“With the encampment lasting so long, I believe they planted potatoes and such. And they receive regular supplies from the nearest village. Every three months, provisions also arrive from the capital.”

The north had little to spare but land, so establishing a camp was not difficult, it seemed. Only the cold remained insurmountable, and for that, they relied upon magic.

“I hear each barracks is issued mana stones. In any case, the villagers nearby are grateful—the monsters are being subjugated.”

“Grateful indeed. If not for His Imperial Majesty, we would have been done for.”

A relatively young woman, inserting herself into the conversation between Fiona and Morin, opened the floodgates. The other women began adding their own remarks.

“In my parents’ time, it wasn’t so, they say. For me, it started around the time I had my third child—twenty years ago, that would be?”

“The first time I saw them, I was that terrified. Thought the world had come to an end.”

“I worried when the new Commander-in-Chief arrived, so young and green. But would you believe it? Since then, the monsters around here have nearly dried up.”

“A handsome-faced youth, and skilled besides. That’s why, I tell you, I put my back into preparing the soldiers’ rations like nothing else.”

Fiona listened to their animated chatter in silence, but as the praises for Jayden continued, her stomach soured.

Likely the wretch was exerting himself for his own advancement rather than the welfare of the northern folk, but there was no need to voice that here.

Besides, Fiona suspected that the credit for eliminating monsters belonged far more to Caligo than to Jayden. That, too, was a truth she could not utter aloud.

“But is a patrol of only a hundred men not rather few?”

Fiona attempted to steer the conversation elsewhere. She had been somewhat puzzled to learn that the provisions they were preparing were for merely a hundred-odd men.

She had no notion of how many monsters dwelt in the Kraphelsus range, nor how many soldiers were needed to counter them, but a hundred seemed too few by any reckoning.

Even if they were only scouting and returning, what if the monsters appeared in a horde? The worry stemmed from her concern for Caligo.

“With the Commander-in-Chief’s strategies and his weapon, a force of that size is ample. He has never once lost to a monster horde.”

At that moment, a soldier who had been standing in the corner of the kitchen, apparently unable to restrain himself, interjected.

“Never lost—he will conquer the mountain range one day.”

His voice brimmed with pride as he praised Jayden’s accomplishments, as though they were his own. The fervent admiration for his commander was such that he looked ready to fellate the man on the spot.

“Strategies and weapon, you say?”

“He possesses a most special weapon. With that beast, he can slaughter monsters by the thousand, the ten thousand, in a single day.”

At the word “beast” from the soldier’s lips, Fiona’s face twisted instantly.

She had anticipated as much, but hearing it spoken aloud by another was something else entirely. The “weapon” and the “beast” the soldier referred to were none other than her husband. The man with warm blood and hot breath, who shared her bed each night.

The soldier’s expression, which gave no consideration whatsoever to Caligo’s humanity, suddenly plunged Fiona’s spirits into the mire. Her temper flared, raw and stung.

Before betraying any such sentiment, however, Fiona steered the conversation elsewhere. A thought had struck her.

“Ah, that beast you speak of—I have heard tales. But rumours only convey so much, do they not? How precisely is the thing deployed?”

Feigning ignorant innocence, Fiona posed her question with a vacant air. The soldier, like all men who delighted in expounding at length upon even a thimbleful of knowledge, launched into a verbose explanation.